A court in Japan has ruled the prime minister's visits to a controversial war shrine are unconstitutional.
A number of war criminals are buried at the Yasukuni shrine, which Junichiro Koizumi has visited four times since taking office in 2001.
The district court said that the visits
violated laws on the separation of church and state.
But Mr
Koizumi said that he found the ruling on his visit "strange" and would go to the shrine again in the future.
"I don't know why it violated the constitution," he said.
Government officials have argued that Mr Koizumi's visits were made as a private citizen, and therefore did not breach the constitutional separation of church and state.
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